Free Agency Day 1 Recap

That was quite a first day of NBA free agency. Over $1B in contracts committed. There were many seemingly overpaid players, but the NBA salary cap will be increasing by 60% over the next 2 years, so those contracts won’t outrageous next year.

Most of the Day 1 signings were teams re-signing their own players. Not too many surprises, except for Kevin Love (it wasn’t known whether he would leave CLE) and Tyson Chandler (moved to PHX).

Lin had a relatively quiet first day. Rumors that DAL, SAS, CHI, SAC, LAC, MEM, IND, GSW, LAL may be interested in Lin. The biggest dominoes remaining are LaMarcus Aldridge (frontrunners are Spurs, Suns) and DeAndre Jordan (frontrunners are Mavs, Clippers). When those two are signed, the rest of the dominoes should follow.

The Lakers made underwhelming impressions to all the free agents that visited them. No one wants to play with them (Love, LaMarcus, DeAndre). But the Kings are even bigger mess. They pursued everyone out of desperation, even Rondo and Monta. Worse, they did a salary dump and traded away valuable future draft picks to try to free up cap space for players who don’t want to come.